English goalkeeper Joe Hart was said to be completely nonplussed by it all, Brian.

MANCHESTER, England -- The fight between Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini and star player Mario Balotelli included "lots of Italian and incomprehensible hand gestures" according to English sources at the club.

"It were proper weird," said Joe Nathan, who washes the kits at the billionaire club. "It all started after the black Italian lad went in a bit late on one of the others. Then the gaffer [Mancini] went racing over there, and before you knew it, it was all 'Ciao' this and 'Arrivederci' that."

Club officials have pasted helpful posters up in the team's changing rooms, so locals can know what the bloody hell is going on.

"Now, cos City is such an international club, I don't understand what most of the lads are saying half the time, so I just watch their hands and like, direct them to the toilet or whatever. But this got reet strange reet fast. There was a bit of pointing and shrugging, but then they started doing that thing with their mouth that they do in gangster movies, where it looks like they are eating popcorn. I'll be fucked if I know what that means."

England and City goalkeeper Joe Hart was interviewed by Sky Sports and told the reporter: "Erm, I have a copy of the club's official gesture translator, but I can't understand it. Which one is the one when they kind of flick their fingers against their chin? They were doing that, and I think they were doing this 'Go fuck yourself' one, but they were doing it a lot, like three times each, as if whoever stopped first lost. Then they were doing other things, like putting horns on their heads, and then Mario did a really elaborate one with what looked like several bodily orifices."

Professor of Italian at Manchester Metropolitan University Joanna Corey explained the importance of gestures to Italian: "It's a very complicated language - there's masculine and feminine nouns, there's all this conjugation and stuff. The consequence of this is that even natives struggle to speak it with any real fluency, and fall back on these hand gestures to get their point across.

"Not all Italians can conjugate the verb andare (to go) quickly enough to tell their loved one 'Vai a fare in culo' ("go and get fucked in the ass") but almost of all of them manage to stutter something vaguely similar, like 'Vaffanculo' and make the accompanying hand gesture to make their meaning clear."